Good news or bad news? Bees on the beach

Sarah: Wonderful news, the bees are back! Well, some anyway.

This week’s check on the freestanding hive on a beach at Yorke Peninsula revealed a small recovery in bee numbers. The central 4-5 panels of honeycomb are covered in active bees, and we saw bees coming too and fro regularly. I wonder if they’re tending bee larvae? (and by the way, check out this amazing 1 minute time lapse of bee development released by National Geographic).

I was even brave enough to sneak in for a super-close up.

For perspective, here’s a long shot of the ledge under which the bees can be found (the arrow shows hive position).

Without a hive, bees still engineer perfectly

Sarah: This dark mass under the ledge of a limestone cliff on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula is formed by bees.

I spotted and photographed the swarm — as I thought it was transient — in October 2014.

During the same week, my family and I discovered thousands and thousands of dead bees in the garage of a nearby house.

With some information provided by a quick twitter conversations with SA Museum, we concluded a group of bees had tried to set up in the house, but then moved to the beach when the queen pulled the pin.

However, when we returned to the same spot several months later, the bees were still there! And incredible structures were visible beneath them – sheets of honeycomb.

Excitedly, I got in touch with the Museum again – this time via email. Two separate scientists sent me responses:

“If appropriate nesting sites are limited, honeybees may try and locate an area that is out of the elements like a cave or crevice and they will sometimes construct their combs exposed in this manner. Often when they do this the hive’s survivability is diminished during winter time.”

“I recall finding numerous such nesting sites under low calcrete / calcarenite ledges on the coastline of Coffin Bay or Venus Bay on Eyre Peninsula.”

I watched the bees for hours, and thought about them endlessly after we had returned to Adelaide .

Lo and behold, when we ventured to the beach again in April 2015, there they were still! But numbers were lower – which made me sad (but I was secretly also thrilled to be able to view more honeycomb).

Another trip in June 2015 confirmed the trend – very few remaining bees, and more visible honeycomb. It appears the museum expert was right – wintering under a beachside ledge is a big ask for bees.

With a few more days planned for Yorke Peninsula in the July school holidays, I wonder what we will find? I’ll be sure to post more photos then.

A beachy boney fishy Easter mystery

Sarah: Tucked away down here at the bottom of Yorke Peninsula, we solved an Easter mystery by social media.

The case began whilst on a family beachcombing foray.  My 6-year old niece ran towards me holding the item shown in the photograph above,

“Aunty Sarah, what is this?”

I did not know, but described to her the features I could see.

“It’s made of bone, and looks a bit like a vertebra, or one of the bones in a spine.  It is symmetrical, which means it would be the same on each side if you chopped it in half along its length. It has flat spines which stick out from one end, and has small holes on each side which you can imagine nerves might come out from in the living situation”

But it wasn’t a bone from a spine of any animal I knew; the unusual rounded end ruled out this possibility. We googled various bone images and came up with nothing. It had us truly flummoxed.

Not just us, but also a group of interested followers on twitter and Facebook. After I posted the following photographic angles….

 

…the comments came rolling in thick and fast:

“Almost looks like the front of the scull of a bottle-nosed dolphin”

“Vertebra was going to be my guess too, overall I have no idea! I do hope it turns out to be a sperm whale tooth!!!”

“At the risk of being a total dunderhead, It looks like an occipital bone/saggital crest on a parietal skull bone but where is the rest of the skull?! Seal? Foetal something? I have no idea, but this is super fun”

“ALIEN”

“Looks like a beak of some kind of bird”

“It looks like mammal bone”

“Agree. Don’t know exactly what it is but it doesn’t look fish-y to me”

“Is it ambergris?”

“True looks like a vertebra. I’d only be guessing. But looks old and well worn. Whale?”

On a whim, I forwarded my images to the twitter account of the South Australian Museum (@SAMuseum). I sat, I waited, it was killing me!

Two days later, a JACKPOT response from the museum.

“Found! This is the bone that forms the hump on the head of a Snapper fish (Chrysophrys auratus)”

Mystery solved! Now I can sleep. Thanks museum staff and all who followed along.

P.S. You can see the bone above the eyes of this X-ray image of a snapper head here. This is the bone that sometimes undergoes abnormal growth and gives some snapper their famous ‘bumpy nose’ appearance.

P.P.S. And for the record, some of the people whose comments are shown above were actually very close. You know who you are!

 

Bone picking

Sarah: After approximately ten years of summers and Easters and long weekends spent at the southern end of Yorke Peninsula, I am now finally the happiest amateur naturalist alive. With my trusty A Guide to Squid, Cuttlefish and Octopuses of Australasia (thanks to redmap), I can finally identify the two species of cuttlefish ‘bones’ (actually internal shells used to aid buoyancy) that wash up on ‘our beach’ at Marion Bay.

The bone shown above  – collected on the beach this afternoon, and photographed on my coffee table – are approximately 10 cms long. On the right is the bone from a Giant Australian Cuttlefish (Sepia apama), famous for its incredible colour and textural displays and mating aggregations in the waters of South Australia (although recent data suggest numbers are declining).

The bone on the left belongs to the Knifebone Cuttlefish (Sepia cultrata), a less common and deeper water species found in waters stretching from Queensland to Western Australia.

No longer will I wander the beaches in ignorance of these chalky cuttle remnants discarded on the high tide line.

Now I can sleep at night.

 

The small things

Sarah: A mere 48 hours ago I was sitting on a beach towel at the bottom of Yorke Peninsula.

Here are some small things I noticed:

• Succulent rock flora (above)
• A teeny crustacean (below)
• A suspicious-looking hole in the sand (below)
• A pure white feather (below)
• A high profile limpet (below)

Day 310. Cuttlefish lineup

Now that I’ve got my new book on cephalopods of Australasia (thanks to REDMAP), I’m dying to put it to good use.

One of the best aspects of the book – for me – is the cuttlebone identification guide on the final series of pages.

You’ll see from Day 300 that I found two differently-shaped cuttlebones on my recent long weekend at Marion Bay.

Matching these images to the ones in my new guide, the top bone I believe to have come from Sepia chirotrema, which lives in the waters of Southern Australia from Investigator Strait to Dirk Hartog Island, Western Australia.

The bottom bone is puzzling me a bit more. It’s broader, more rounded and has a smaller pointed spine. My best guess it that maybe it’s Sepia mestus (the ‘Reaper Cuttlefish‘). These creatures live in the waters of Eastern Australia; I suppose it’s possible that the bone was carried by waves to South Australia. I’m not certain.

It’s also possible that the Reaper Cuttlefish is expanding in its distribution, but I have no other evidence to support that theory.

If only I’d brought back the bones with me to Adelaide for closer inspection! Next time.

Image shows my son doing cephalopod research, inspired by our fantastic new book. 

Day 309. Something fishy going on

There’s something fishy going on in our seas.

Oceanic animals are on the move.

Well yes….fish do usually swim around a bit. But the geographic range that a particular species of fish or other marine species normally inhabits is quite limited. Southern Bluefin Tuna like the cool oceans at the bottom end of Australia. Marlin tend to hang about in the relatively warmer currents along the Eastern coast of Australia.

So when fish like these start to appear outside of their normal ranges, scientist’s eyebrows start to rise.

Take for example this wahoo caught in South Australia recently. It was way out of its normal range, the Northern waters of Australia.

Its just another piece of evidence that ocean temperatures are increasing. And it’s just one of many data points which has emerged from REDMAP.

REDMAP is an online resource through which recreational and commercial fishers, SCUBA divers, boaters and scientists spot, log and map any uncommon marine species not usually seen in particular coastal areas.

Put together over years, data collected through REDMAP will provide a record of what species are on the move as the oceans around Australia warm. Other data already suggests that oceans around our country have warmed at over twice the global average, and even faster in the south-western and south-eastern regions.

REDMAP is hosted by the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies.

I must disclose I’ve had a few chats with the lovely staff at REDMAP recently, particularly regarding my love of spotting marine species at the bottom end of Yorke Peninsula. They even sent me a precious copy of the out-of-print A Guide to Squid, Cuttlefish and Octopuses of Australiasia, as well as a cool drink bottle (as shown in image above).

I can’t wait to get back to Yorkes and re-start my ocean watching in earnest. I’ll keep you posted.

NB You can also follow REDMAP on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RedmapAustralia

Day 306. Reaching out

Scientists tend to have a reputation as being insular, single-minded researchers with not much interest in communicating with the outside world.

I enjoy the opportunity to refute this stereotype, and I’m happy to report this week has provided me with a great example.

So, last weekend I photographed and wrote about beautiful and unusual layers of rock. Curious about these structures, I did a bit of searching for academic papers and found:

Genesis of Blackened Limestone Clasts At Late Cenozoic Subaerial Exposure Surfaces, Southern Australia, by Cody R. Miller, Noel P. James and T. Kurtis Kyser

Not exactly easy reading.

On a whim, I decided to email author Cody Miller.

Hello Cody,

I found your paper in Journal of Sedimentary Research, and thought you might be able to help me with a geological question.

The photos shown here were taken just adjacent to Innes National Park, South Australia over the past weekend.

Can you tell me how they formed? I’d love to tell my blog readers.

Best wishes,

Sarah

A few days later, lo and behold a response! Here’s an edited version of it:

Hello Sarah,

Thank you for reaching out to me.

In short, yes I can tell you how those “weird” rock formations formed. The most confusing and intriguing part of those pictures (to me anyways) was the formation of blackened limestone clasts. The paper of mine you reference explains how we think they form, via a complex biological system of plants roots calcifying and trapping organic compounds into their crystal structure.

Again thank you for reaching out. I have long been fascinated by these rocks and I am glad they caught someone else’s eye as well.

All the best

Cody

I’m totally thrilled that Cody devoted some of his precious research and grant-writing time to respond to me. I think it’s a good case study showing that if you reach out to scientists and show an interest in their field of expertise, show them that you see that their knowledge is valuable, they are only too happy to help.

I was also delighted to note that Cody’s research on limestone clasts was performed at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. It’s where my Mum and Dad both did postgraduate research as newly weds, and where I was born.

[image thanks to Identity Photography on flickr]

Day 301. Early morning colour

After a big ocean swell the beach holds special treasures.

An early morning run this morning revealed an array of colourful items: three different sponges and a partial sea star.

Day 300. Beach celebration

I’m celebrating day 300 at ScienceforLife.365 with a long weekend at Marion Bay, Yorkes Peninsula.

A walk on the beach revealed two different types of cuttle ‘bones’ (above);

Skate egg cases (two examples shown); and

Sand dune plant roots exposed by erosion.

Simple and beautiful images from nature.